American summer camps employ over one million individuals every summer. However, little research has been conducted evaluating the experiences and outcomes for the camp staff. In particular, research efforts have done little to examine the subset of staff members working in formal leadership positions at summer camps. Often college-aged emerging…

Veteran staff members play a key role in a camp's success. They preserve camp culture, maintain traditions, and serve important roles in the peer-training environment that camps depend on. It is not surprising, then, that camp counselor retention is important to the business of camping. This study focused on five counselors from Jewish camps in…

Problem: Leaders today need a new set of knowledge and skills to be effective in collaborative environments. The focus of this study was to investigate how collaborative environments can contribute to leadership development. The purpose of this study was to describe how the collaborative environment of summer camp helped shape emerging adults as…

Describes study profiling camp-counselor supervisors, their training, and directors' definitions of good supervisor training. Shows head counselors' off-season occupations often education-related. Makes recommendations for staff selection to camp directors. Details 11 suggestions for training camp supervisors and encouraging good relationships…

Although summer camps can provide opportunities for personal growth, self-worth, and education for living, camp programming changes are necessary because today's youth have had experiences which reduce the novelty of camping. Summer camps can be used to provide the missing rite of passage from youth to adulthood and to create real contexts and…

The 10-day 1980 National Leadership Conference sponsored and administered by the American Youth Foundation, was held at Camp Miniwanca (Michigan) for 123 youth participants representing four cities (Indianapolis, Omaha, Kansas City, St. Louis). The theme was leadership (the leader as servant and guide who helps a group to achieve their ends,…

During the summer of 1971, the Administration of Atlanta Public Schools used Emergency School Assistance Program funds to utilize a summer camp as a living-working community which would be an integral part of a four-week fourth quarter, problem-solving course dealing with desegregation problems. The objective of this group was to serve as a model…

Both participants in the Ontario Camp Leadership Center at Bark Lake and their sponsoring organizations agreed on the benefits of the leadership development experience and enthusiastically endorsed the program. Researchers conducted a 19-question telephone survey of 202 program participants and a 32-question survey of 40 sponsors and 20…

The 10-day 1981 National Leadership Conference (NLC) sponsored by the American Youth Foundation was held at Camp Miniwanca (Michigan) for 182 urban high school students selected for leadership ability or potential and other specific criteria established by each student's home city. Students participated in seminars, skills explorations,…

Two former staff members reflect on their feelings about the August 1995 closing of Bark Lake Leadership Centre (Ontario, Canada), which for 49 years had offered outdoor adventure and environmental education courses to youth and adults. They discuss their experiences as both students and teachers at the center, which helped shape their careers in…

Ethnographic research examined the culture of a Knoxville, Tennessee, middle-school technology education classroom before, during, and after a summer youth development experience. The summer camp provided technology education and leadership development to middle- and lower-class students. Several observations of salient behavior were made with…

The 1981 Project Leadership-Service Conference, focusing on serving the community as the training ground for leadership, was conducted for 53 Indianapolis seniors who arrived in early August for 4 days preparatory training and 137 Indianapolis inner city sixth graders who arrived in mid-August. Ten teachers from the sixth graders' schools…

The central theme of the 10-day National Leadership Conference (NLC), sponsored by the American Youth Foundation at Camp Miniwanca (Michigan), is to train high school students in leadership for service; its goal is to sharpen service-learning leadership skills of young people and teachers and to encourage their application to transform and serve…

This report presented results of longitudinal evaluation of Indian Youth Leadership Conference summer camps which provide 8- to 10-day sessions of physical activities and action-oriented problem-solving situations for male and female junior high aged Indian students aimed at developing skills and motivation. The evaluation provided information…